Death on a Galician Shore

by Villar, Domingo

The number of burglaries in the area had increased over the past few years and many homeowners had installed alarms and other security devices. The inspector was hoping that a CCTV camera outside one of the houses had caught someone heading along the road the previous Sunday. It was the only road leading away from the lighthouse. After landing at the pool and making their way down the track, they would have had to pass along that stretch of road.

  ‘There!’ said Estevez soon afterwards, pulling the car up alongside one of the first houses.

  It was a modern house with a garden surrounded by a high stone wall. The camera was on the second floor, directed at the entrance, the most vulnerable point of the perimeter. Any car driving along the road would be caught on camera.

  Caldas rang the doorbell but there was no answer. The blinds were drawn and the letterbox was overflowing with rain-dampened junk mail. He assumed it was a holiday home, so he simply noted down the name of the security firm that had supplied the alarm, prominently displayed on the wall as a deterrent. He also took down the house number on the stone wall and returned to the car.

  They drove on slowly, scanning every wall, door and window. They saw several security firm signs, but no more cameras.

  At the crossroads, Estevez asked, ‘Are we going back to Vigo?’

  Caldas nodded and they turned left, away from Panxón.

  They stopped for petrol.

  ‘I’m going for a piss,’ said Estevez, after he’d filled the tank.

  ‘Try to get another bag,’ said Caldas. ‘We need to divide up the percebes.’

  Estevez nodded and headed towards the toilets. While he waited, the inspector called Clara Barcia and gave her the name of the security firm and the house number.

  ‘Do you think there’ll be any footage from last Sunday?’ he asked.

  ‘Depends on the equipment, Inspector.’

  ‘The equipment?’

  ‘The recording equipment,’ said Barcia. ‘If it stores images on disk there’ll be several weeks’ worth but if it’s the kind that uses a tape you can forget about Sunday. There’ll only be a couple of days’ footage.’

  ‘Right,’ said Caldas. ‘Thanks, Clara.’

  Estevez had got back by the time the inspector hung up.

  ‘You shouldn’t have called her, Inspector.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it’s Saturday.’

  ‘She didn’t complain.’

  ‘No,’ said Estevez. ‘Not to you.’

  Estevez drew up outside Caldas’s apartment building, exactly where he’d picked him up earlier that morning. The inspector climbed out of the car, stretched and looked at his watch. It was eleven thirty. They got the two kilos of percebes out of the boot and divided them up.

  ‘I’ve never tried them,’ said Estevez.

  ‘Well, a kilo isn’t a bad start,’ said Caldas. ‘Shall I tell you how to cook them?’

  ‘If you don’t mind,’ replied Estevez.

  ‘It’s easy. Set a pan of sea water on to boil, with a bay leaf …’

  ‘Does it really have to be sea water?’ interrupted Estevez.

  ‘You can use tap water with salt added,’ said the inspector. ‘When it comes to a rolling boil, add the percebes and wait for it to come back to the boil. Count to fifty, drain, serve and enjoy.’

  ‘Do I eat them hot?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Caldas. ‘Cover them with a cloth so they don’t get cold.’

  ‘OK,’ said Estevez. ‘See you Monday then.’

  ‘Get in early on Monday, Rafa,’ said the inspector, holding up the envelope containing the photo the priest of Panxón had given him. ‘We need to go to Aguiño. Let’s see if they remember that woman and her son.’

  ‘Do you still believe that Sousa …’ said Estevez. Caldas made a face that Estevez was at a loss to interpret.

  Estevez opened the car door and, before seating himself behind the wheel, pointed at the bag in the inspector’s hand.

  ‘Do you think she’ll like them?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You know.’

  Caldas glanced at the percebes. ‘I think so,’ he replied. ‘Better than salad anyway.’

  The Crew

  Inside his apartment, Caldas put the envelope containing the photo of the Xurelo’s crew down on the table and switched on the television with the remote. Then he went to the kitchen, placed the bag of percebes in the bottom of the fridge and had a swig of water straight from the bottle. Back in the sitting room, he picked up the photograph and went to lie on the sofa.

  Captain Sousa, in his woollen cap, was seated in front of the others, staring straight at the camera. Caldas thought he looked proud of his boat and his crew. The three younger men stood behind him. They were in yellow waterproofs almost identical to the ones worn by the fishermen pleading for mercy from the Virgin of El Carmen in the Templo Votivo del Mar.

  José Arias was in the middle. He was several inches taller than the other two. Then as now he had stubble on his chin, but his smile and his youth made him look much less fierce than the man the inspector had met in Panxón. To his right stood Justo Castelo, the unmistakable blond hair flopping over his eyes. On the other side was Marcos Valverde who didn’t yet slick his hair back. Even in those days he looked the youngest of the three. Behind them the word Xurelo was partly visible.

  Caldas slid the photo back into the envelope and put it on the table. Like a boat stranded at low tide, the investigation had come to a standstill. Caldas wondered when the tide would turn.

  He looked at his watch: it was just after one. Remembering that his father had said he’d be getting to the hospital before lunch, he picked up his mobile phone.

  ‘Are you at the hospital?’

  ‘I’ve been here since one o’clock,’ said his father. ‘Are you going to drop by?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Caldas. ‘Why don’t you come here for lunch afterwards? I’ve got a kilo of fresh percebes in the fridge.’

  ‘I have a better idea,’ said his father. ‘We’ve got something to celebrate.’

  Caldas listened, then said, ‘It’s not allowed.’

  ‘Bloody hell, Leo. Aren’t you ever off duty?’

  The inspector cooked the percebes, drained them and placed them, wrapped in a damp cloth, in an insulated plastic container. Then he hurried out, hailed a taxi and told the driver to take him to the hospital.

  ‘Have you brought them?’ asked his father as he entered room 211. His uncle smiled behind the mask.

  Caldas held up the bag and went to the high table. He moved the radio and newspapers to the floor, took out the plastic container, opened it and placed the cloth filled with percebes straight on to the table.

  ‘Leave the box there for the shells,’ said his father, turning the handle that raised the head of his brother’s bed.

  ‘Are you going to tell me what we’re celebrating?’ asked the inspector.

  ‘Alberto can go home.’

  He looked at his uncle. He was still smiling.

  ‘When?’

  ‘This week,’ said his father. ‘He’s been seen by a new doctor. He doesn’t think Alberto needs to stay here, as long as he’s got oxygen. How about that?’

  Caldas wasn’t sure it was good news.

  ‘That’s great,’ he said, smiling back at his uncle.

  ‘He’s going to come and stay with me,’ said his father. ‘At least until he’s a bit better and can manage on his own.’

  Caldas nodded.

  ‘I’ll let you know when he’s being discharged and you can help move him, Leo.’

  ‘Of course,’ said the inspector, laying a hand on his uncle’s wrist.

  He could feel every bone in the emaciated arm, but behind the smiling eyes was a happy man.

  ‘You can meet the dog.’

  The patient frowned, clearly not knowing what Caldas was talking about.

  Caldas turned to his father. ‘Haven’t you told him you’ve got a dog?’

  ‘Me?’


  Caldas tutted and looked at his uncle.

  ‘He’s got a dog,’ he said, pointing at his father. ‘A brown one. Quite big.’

  ‘It’s not mine.’

  ‘Of course it is,’ said Caldas. ‘It lives on the estate and it won’t let him out of its sight.’

  ‘Well, there are birds on the estate, and moles, and flies,’ said his father. ‘And it would never occur to me to consider them mine.’

  Caldas and his uncle were still smiling as the inspector opened out the cloth. He shelled the first percebe and handed it to his uncle. Alberto took it with a bony hand and raised it to his lips, the mask hissing as he removed it.

  ‘Where’s the wine?’ asked his father, peering under the table.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You don’t expect us to eat all these percebes without wine, do you?’

  Caldas smiled. He thought his father was joking. But he wasn’t.

  The Threshold

  On Monday morning the city was cold and hazy, as if covered in a cloud of ash. Caldas shaved in the shower, dressed and walked to the police station. When he got there Estevez was standing by Olga’s desk, in his coat, looking at a map of Galicia on the computer screen.

  ‘Where is it we’re going?’ he asked.

  ‘Aguiño,’ replied Caldas, placing his finger on the screen at the tip of the Barbanza peninsula, between the rias of Arousa and Muros.

  ‘Have you got the exact address?’

  ‘I think so,’ said Caldas, taking from his jacket pocket the copy of the missing persons report he’d put there with the photo of the boat’s crew. Rebeca Neira’s address was written in pencil in the margin. Olga keyed in the address and a map of the area appeared on screen.

  ‘Off we go then,’ said Estevez, grabbing the map as it emerged from the printer.

  They drove down the Calle del Arenal and took the motorway out of Vigo. Caldas had his eyes closed so, when they crossed the Rande Bridge, he didn’t see the flat-bottomed boats lined up in the ria or the Cies Islands in the misty distance.

  ‘Doesn’t the noise bother you?’ asked Estevez, with a sideways glance at the slightly open window.

  ‘Yes, it does,’ said Caldas but didn’t close it. He would rather let in the fresh morning air even if it meant enduring the noise.

  *

  After another fifty kilometres they left the motorway and crossed the River Ulla. Mist hung over the treetops as they drove along the Barbanza peninsula to Aguiño.

  It was a small village – a few hundred houses built around a harbour and beach.

  ‘There’s no police station here, is there?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ said Caldas. ‘Any problems are handled at Ribeira.’

  Glancing at the map, Estevez turned off to the right. The road led uphill away from the sea, with small houses dotted among fields on either side.

  ‘It must be one of these,’ said Estevez.

  ‘There are some people over there,’ said Caldas, indicating a white two-storey house. Thick smoke, paler than the day, rose from the stone chimney. Beside the house grew a gnarled chestnut tree, missing half its leaves.

  Estevez pulled up outside and Caldas wound the window right down to call out to a woman sweeping the front steps. She was so small that the broom in her hands looked like a gondolier’s pole.

  ‘Hello,’ said Caldas. ‘Could you tell me where Rebeca Neira lives?’

  The woman stopped sweeping. She looked no more than thirty – too young to be the woman they were looking for.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Rebeca Neira,’ repeated the inspector.

  She looked at them in silence, as if trying to work out why they wanted to know.

  ‘Who’s asking after her?’

  ‘We’re police officers,’ said Caldas. ‘From Vigo.’

  ‘One moment.’

  She propped the broom against the wall and went inside the house.

  ‘Mother,’ they heard her say. ‘Some policemen are asking about Rebeca the First.’

  She returned with an older woman who put a coat around her shoulders as she came outside. Her grey hair was held up by dozens of black pins. She was even smaller than her daughter.

  ‘You’re looking for someone?’ she said.

  ‘We’re looking for the house where Rebeca Neira lives,’ said Caldas. ‘Can you help?’

  The woman approached the car and, with no need to bend down, peered through the open window just as her daughter had done a moment earlier.

  ‘It’s that one,’ she replied, pointing across the road.

  The policemen looked in the direction she’d indicated and saw a stone house, almost completely hidden by the morning mist and rampant vegetation. The blinds were dirty and falling apart, the windows broken, and brambles climbed all over the railings that surrounded the property, stretching thorny branches towards the road. The house had obviously been empty for years.

  They got out of the car. Caldas inhaled deeply – the air smelled of the sea, of damp earth and wood smoke.

  ‘How long since she moved out?’ he asked.

  ‘You can see for yourself the state it’s in.’

  The inspector glanced again at the dilapidated house. The garden was so overgrown a rhino could have been hiding in there.

  ‘But she still lives in the village?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Rebeca Neira.’

  The woman shook her head. ‘She left years ago.’

  ‘Do you know where she went?’

  ‘She didn’t say goodbye,’ the woman said, brusquely.

  Caldas nodded. ‘She lived with her son, didn’t she?’

  ‘Yes, just the two of them,’ she replied, emphasising the words.

  ‘He no longer lives in Aguiño either?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How long ago did they leave?’ asked Estevez.

  Mother and daughter looked up as if scanning the sky for a plane they’d just heard. Estevez seemed like a giant beside the two tiny women.

  ‘Ten or twelve years ago,’ said the one with the hairpins. ‘Maybe longer.’

  ‘You haven’t seen them since?’

  ‘I haven’t,’ she said firmly.

  The inspector looked at her daughter and she shook her head: she hadn’t had any news about Diego and Rebeca either.

  Caldas unfolded the missing persons report, which gave the name and identity number of the police officer who’d dealt with the case: ‘Somoza’, Caldas read. Nieves Ortiz had said he was from Aguiño. Maybe he knew where Rebeca Neira and her son had moved to.

  ‘Does Deputy Inspector Somoza still live in the village?’

  ‘The policeman?’ said the mother. ‘He retired some time ago.’

  ‘But does he still live here?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the woman. ‘Next to the church.’

  They got back into the car and, before closing his eyes, Caldas had another look at the ruins of the Neiras’ house.

  ‘Are we going to the deputy inspector’s house?’ asked Estevez.

  Caldas nodded and leaned back, wondering again when the tide of the investigation would turn.

  A Former Policeman

  Deputy Inspector Somoza was a tall man in a grey woollen jumper who stooped as he walked. He had a big nose, thick lips and sparse white hair that was combed back. Though he wore glasses he squinted myopically, causing his face to furrow.

  ‘I’m no one’s colleague nowadays,’ he said when they’d identified themselves. ‘I’m retired.’

  Caldas smiled. ‘We wanted to ask you something.’

  The man invited them in and they followed him down a narrow hallway. Shuffling in his felt slippers, he showed them into a tiny sitting room that was overflowing with furniture. They sat down at a mesa camilla, a small table with a heater beneath it, facing the tele -vision which was switched on. On a low table, beside a ceramic lamp, Caldas saw an old photograph of Somoza in uniform. He had thick, dark hair and wasn’t wearing glasses but he was already sq
uinting at the camera, mouth gaping.

  The deputy inspector switched off the television with the remote control. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘We’re investigating the murder of a fisherman.’

  ‘In Aguiño?’

  ‘No,’ replied Caldas. ‘In a village on the Vigo estuary. But it may have something to do with a boat that sank near here, and with this,’ he said, handing Somoza the missing persons report.

  Somoza glanced at the document. ‘This happened a long time ago.’

  Caldas nodded and showed him the photograph of the crew of the Xurelo. ‘In the report the boy mentioned a fisherman with very fair hair,’ he said, pointing first at the relevant section of the document, then at Justo Castelo in the photograph. ‘We think this may be him.’

  Breathing noisily through his mouth, Deputy Inspector Somoza looked at the report and photograph.

  ‘The boat went down on the same night in shallows off Salvora. The skipper drowned,’ said Caldas. ‘We’re trying to find out what happened just before.’

  The retired policeman shrugged. ‘I don’t see how I can help.’

  ‘We’re trying to track down Rebeca Neira or her son.’

  ‘They left the village.’

  ‘So we’ve been told. Do you know where they moved to?’

  Somoza shook his head and pushed the report and photograph across the table towards the inspector. ‘I know as much as anyone else. They left.’

  ‘Did Rebeca Neira ever tell you what happened that night?’

  Somoza took a deep breath before answering, ‘Rebeca never came back to the village.’

  Had Caldas been a dog he would have pricked up his ears.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Everyone called her Rebeca the First. She was always ahead of the rest. In everything. She became a mother when she was still a child herself.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘She must have gone off with some man,’ said Somoza contemptuously. ‘It wouldn’t have been the first time that going out for a beer turned into several nights of bingeing.’

  ‘You didn’t investigate her disappearance?’

  ‘Of course we did,’ he said. ‘We looked for her until we found out she’d left.’